According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the labor force is made up of:
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Sociology · Foundations
Work
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work Any activity that produces goods or services for use by others or for one's own use; the ILO's working definition covers paid and unpaid, formal and informal activity. Full entry → is the activity through which people earn a living and contribute to society — from a nurse's shift to a parent's unpaid care at home. The International Labour Organization defines work as any activity that produces goods or services for others or for one's own use, paid or unpaid, formal or informal. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts only paid work in the labor force The employed plus the unemployed, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines them: people working for pay or profit, plus jobless people actively looking and available to work. Full entry →. Jobs also shape identity and status, and work today keeps changing through automation, gigs, and remote arrangements. Work is where society and self meet.
Why this matters
Work fills most adults' waking hours and decides how they live, yet its shape is easy to take for granted. Academically, work is sociology's bridge between the individual and society: a paycheck, an identity, and a contribution all at once. Practically, knowing how official statistics define employment Work performed for others in exchange for pay or profit, as classified by the International Labour Organization. Full entry → — and what they leave out — helps you read any headline about jobs, unemployment, or the workforce with clear eyes. Forward-looking, the changes rolling through work, from automation to gig A part-time job performed by freelance workers for a limited amount of time; the word comes from musicians' short engagements. Full entry → platforms to remote arrangements, will reshape careers for decades. The honest payoff is the simplest: understanding work as a social activity rather than just a transaction makes your own working life — and everyone else's — easier to see clearly.
The college version
What work is
Sociologists study work as a social activity, not just a transaction. The working definition comes from the International Labour Organization, whose 2013 resolution on statistics of work defines work as any activity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or to provide services for use by others or for own use — paid or unpaid, formal or informal. In plain language, work is the activity through which people earn a living and contribute to society. Original example: Priya teaches piano for a fee, and her brother spends his Saturdays rebuilding the porch of their grandmother's house. Both are work in the ILO's sense; only one is paid.
Work sits inside the economy
Work is the human activity at the center of the economy — the system through which goods and services are produced, exchanged, and consumed. OpenStax's sociology text treats work and the economy in one chapter because the two cannot be separated: the economy is the stage, and work is what people do on it. The economy itself gets its own topic; what matters here is the direction of the relationship: people do not work because the economy exists; the economy exists because people work.
Types of work: paid, unpaid, formal, informal
The ILO resolution sorts work into five forms: employment work, performed for others in exchange for pay or profit; own-use production work Work that produces goods or services for one's own final use, such as housework, home repairs, or growing food for the family table. Full entry →, goods and services produced for one's own final use, like housework; unpaid trainee work, without pay, for experience; volunteer work Non-compulsory work performed for others without pay, such as staffing a food pantry or coaching a youth team. Full entry →, non-compulsory and unpaid; and other work activities. Two distinctions matter most in everyday conversation. Paid versus unpaid: employment is paid; own-use production, traineeships, and volunteering are not. Formal versus informal: work is defined irrespective of its formal or informal character — formal work Registered, regulated work covered by contracts, taxes, and labor protections, such as a salaried office job. Full entry → is registered and covered by contracts, taxes, and labor protections, while informal work Work that happens outside official registration and regulation, such as paid cash jobs without contracts. Full entry → runs outside those arrangements. Original examples: Tarek, an accountant at a mid-size firm, does formal paid work; Sofia sells tamales at the weekend market for cash, informal paid work; Marcus cares for his toddler at home, unpaid own-use work; the retired couple who staff the library book sale every month do volunteer work.
The labor force: who counts as working
Official statistics use a narrower lens. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the labor force as the employed plus the unemployed Jobless, having actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and currently available to start, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Full entry →. Employed means doing any work at all for pay or profit during the survey's reference week — part-time and temporary work count — or having a job but being off that week for vacation or illness. Unemployed means having no job, actively looking for work in the past four weeks, and available to start. Everyone else — students, retirees, at-home caregivers — is not in the labor force. The survey covers people 16 and over with no upper age limit. One nuance: unpaid family workers who put in 15 or more hours a week in a family business or farm are counted as employed. But the parent who stays home to raise children is not in the labor force — not because the care is worthless, but because the BLS counts paid work. That gap between the broad definition of work and the statistical one matters.
Work and identity
Work does more than pay bills; it shapes who people are and how others see them. OpenStax describes the American Dream as the belief that hard work, good work habits, and education lead to a good job — long seen as the key to a successful life. Jobs carry status: some positions are highly paid while others are not, an example of the class system. And work runs in families: sociologists call it career inheritance when children tend to enter the same or similar occupations as their parents. Original example: Dana works the night shift as a nurse in a small hospital. Saying 'I'm a nurse' reports an occupation, a skill, and a place in the community at once — and her father was a paramedic, a quiet instance of career inheritance.
How work is changing
Three changes are reshaping work, one factual line each. Automation: OpenStax describes automation as replacing workers with technology — computers do routine tasks like bookkeeping, clerical work, and repetitive assembly-line jobs faster and more cheaply than people. Gig work: Britannica defines a gig as a part-time job performed by freelance workers for a limited amount of time — a form of work that long predates the apps that now connect gig workers with customers. Remote work: Pew Research Center found that in February 2022, roughly six-in-ten U.S. workers whose jobs could mainly be done from home (59 percent) were working from home all or most of the time — down from 71 percent in October 2020 but far above the 23 percent who teleworked frequently before the pandemic.
The honest picture: meaning and strain
Here is the reality check, stated plainly. Work is a source of both meaning and strain. The same job that gives Dana her identity and her income also tires her, and the same automation that makes groceries cheaper can cost a bookkeeper a living. OpenStax documents the strain at the level of the job market, in polarization A split in the job market in which most opportunities sit at the lowest and highest levels while mid-level jobs thin out, as documented by OpenStax. Full entry →. So here is the honest framing of this lesson: work is where society and self meet. Society needs goods produced and services delivered; people need income, identity, and a place in the social fabric. Both needs are met — and sometimes bruised — in the same activity, which is why work is a social activity, not just a transaction.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Think of work as everything people do that produces something useful for themselves or for others. It includes the job that pays a salary, but it also includes the dinner cooked at home, the tutoring given free to a neighbor, and the shelf built for the family garage. Governments count only part of it: the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts people who work for pay or profit, plus people actively looking for such work. So work is a big umbrella, and employment is the slice under it that gets counted in the labor force. And work is never just about money. People introduce themselves by their jobs, are respected for them, and sometimes follow their parents into them — which is why work also shapes identity and status.
Picture it like this
Work is like the threads in a woven cloth. Each person's labor is one thread — the nurse's shift, the baker's loaves, the parent's bedtime stories. No single thread is the whole cloth, but remove too many and the fabric thins and tears. The loom that holds the threads together is the economy, and the pattern that emerges — who is valued, who is paid, who is visible — is the society you can see from a distance.
Where the picture stops working
Where the analogy breaks down: threads cannot choose their place in the pattern, but people make choices about their work, within limits set by their opportunities. A finished cloth hangs still, while work is never finished and constantly changes. And pulling one thread from a cloth leaves the rest intact, while one person losing a job can upend that person's whole life.
Worked example
The Nguyen family shows every idea in one ordinary Tuesday. Elena works the register at Marigold Market — paid, formal, and in the labor force as employed. Her father Luis does cash-in-hand construction for a neighbor, with no contract — paid and informal, but still employment work under the ILO's definition, and still counted as employed by the BLS because he did work for pay in the reference week. Her mother Ana spends the day caring for her younger brother and cooking — real work in the ILO's broad sense, own-use production, but not employment, so Ana is not in the labor force. Her grandmother sorts donations at the food pantry — volunteer work, unpaid. When Elena tells new coworkers she is 'the night cashier at Marigold,' she is doing what work always does: reporting an income, an identity, and a place in her community all at once.
Key takeaway
Work is the activity through which people earn a living and contribute to society — paid or unpaid, formal or informal — and because jobs carry identity and status, work is where society and self meet: a source of both meaning and strain.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
Priya bakes bread every Saturday for her family's Sunday dinner and sells none of it. Under the International Labour Organization's classification of forms of work, her baking is:
Choose an answer, then check it.
Marta cleans houses for neighbors for cash, with no contract and no taxes withheld. Which statement correctly classifies her activity?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define work using the attributed working definition (ILO): any activity that produces goods or services for others or for one's own use.
- Distinguish paid from unpaid work and formal from informal work, with original examples of each.
- Explain the BLS labor-force categories — employed, unemployed, and not in the labor force — and who counts in each.
- Describe how jobs shape identity and status, using the American Dream framing, the class system, and career inheritance.
- Explain automation, gig work, and remote work as changes in how work is arranged, each with a factual one-line account.
- Evaluate the honest framing that work is where society and self meet — a source of both meaning and strain.
Common mistakes
Only paid jobs count as work.
The ILO definition includes own-use production, volunteer, and trainee work alongside employment. The BLS labor force is the narrower paid-work measure. Both are valid; they answer different questions — what counts as productive activity, and who official statistics count as working.
The labor force is everyone with a job, plus everyone who wants one.
The BLS defines the labor force as the employed plus the unemployed: people working for pay or profit, plus jobless people who have actively looked in the past four weeks and are available to start. Someone who wants a job but has not looked recently is not in the labor force.
Gig work is brand new.
Britannica notes that a gig is a short-term freelance job and that the word comes from musicians' one-off engagements. Short-term work is old; the apps that connect gig workers with customers are what is new.
Automation will simply wipe out jobs.
OpenStax describes automation as replacing workers with technology on routine tasks — bookkeeping, clerical work, assembly lines. The job market has not emptied out; it has polarized, with growth at the lowest and highest levels and fewer mid-level jobs. The change is uneven, not total.
Easily confused
Work vs. Employment
Work is the broad category: any activity producing goods or services for others or for one's own use. Employment is the slice performed for others in exchange for pay or profit. A parent's childcare is work but not employment.
Formal work vs. Informal work
Both can be paid. Formal work is registered and covered by contracts, taxes, and labor protections; informal work runs outside those arrangements. An accountant's salary and a cash-only market stall are both employment, but only the first is formal.
The labor force vs. All working people
The BLS labor force counts the employed plus the unemployed — a paid-work measure covering people 16 and over. The ILO's work umbrella also includes unpaid own-use, trainee, and volunteer work. The two measure different things.
Key vocabulary
- work
- Any activity that produces goods or services for use by others or for one's own use; the ILO's working definition covers paid and unpaid, formal and informal activity.
- employment
- Work performed for others in exchange for pay or profit, as classified by the International Labour Organization.
- own-use production work
- Work that produces goods or services for one's own final use, such as housework, home repairs, or growing food for the family table.
- volunteer work
- Non-compulsory work performed for others without pay, such as staffing a food pantry or coaching a youth team.
- formal work
- Registered, regulated work covered by contracts, taxes, and labor protections, such as a salaried office job.
- informal work
- Work that happens outside official registration and regulation, such as paid cash jobs without contracts.
- labor force
- The employed plus the unemployed, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines them: people working for pay or profit, plus jobless people actively looking and available to work.
- unemployed
- Jobless, having actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and currently available to start, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- gig
- A part-time job performed by freelance workers for a limited amount of time; the word comes from musicians' short engagements.
- polarization
- A split in the job market in which most opportunities sit at the lowest and highest levels while mid-level jobs thin out, as documented by OpenStax.
Sources & references
- How the Government Measures Unemployment (Current Population Survey) — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Introduction to Sociology 3e, 18.3 Work in the United States — OpenStax, Rice University
- Introduction to Sociology 3e, 18.1 Economic Systems — OpenStax, Rice University
- Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization (19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, 2013) — International Labour Organization
- COVID-19 Pandemic Continues To Reshape Work in America — Pew Research Center
- Gig economy — Encyclopaedia Britannica
EliExplains lessons are original prose written from the open, credible references above. See Copyright & Licensing.
Researched 2026-08-22
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